


Fall From Grace

by Leyenn



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: F/F, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 03:20:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sex and security cameras are sometimes a bad mix.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fall From Grace

_'The little noises she makes. Does she cry out? Or sigh softly?'_

Michael Garibaldi would have said, though it would have taken considerable broken fingers to pull it out of him, that he was insanely curious about those answers. Up until about six minutes ago.

Now he can say with a brief modicum of truth that he never honestly wanted to know. At least, he could have lived without knowing like this.

Talia makes sounds he never even imagined in his dreams, or maybe they just sound different when it's not him she's whispering for. When it's Ivanova's hand crinkling her nightgown, Ivanova's fingers tangled in her hair, Ivanova devouring her mouth like the sun's about to go nova and just wait one more second, damn it -

He wasn't, despite all appearances, planning on this being a night of sober perversity of the highest order when he dropped back into the office in the dead of night. He couldn't sleep, that was as innocent as it started out. He was bored, thought he'd catch up on some paperwork - yeah, that bored. Thought he'd grab a few data crystals and then take a walk back through the Gardens. Had a spurt of creative efficiency that he's never going to indulge again, if it ever comes calling, and decided to just set up a quick sweep of the secure cams. Just on the lookout for any more psychos in the woodwork.

It was not, in the absolute negative sense _not_, his fault that Ivanova forgot to divert the damn security camera, or that two a.m. seems to be the prime time for bedroom meetings between people who, to the best of his imaginings, were supposed to be at the 'civil through light friendship' stage of acquaintance.

He's never gonna be able to sleep ever again after tonight.

It would help if he hadn't cued the sound up. It would help if he'd noticed sometime in the first minute that it was Ivanova's secure cam and not been that tiny, angry, jealous little bit too curious to see whether that really was Talia Winters on the screen before he noticed that whether it was or not, she was in the middle of proposing rampant sex to one of his best friends. One who would rip his nuts off and force-feed them to him sautéed if she found out he even knew the color of her sheets.

It would really, really help if he hadn't cued the sound up.

She doesn't cry out, at least not at a kiss or a mouth working down her neck; but she has a vocabulary of soft, incoherent sounds he's never heard before. And the walls of his office are very, very quiet at this time of night.

Ivanova isn't.

Ivanova has all sorts of fascinating ideas that she just can't keep to herself, it seems. And the gain on these camera microphones is unholy, because he can hear almost every word.

He can hear her murmuring, slurred against skin. "_Talia..._"

There's a laugh in reply, as if it's funny the way she's guiding down a thin grey strap of satin and kissing patterns over that soft, pale skin. Talia lifts herself almost half off the bed to help, and he'd almost swear - if he was ever going to mention this, ever - that for an instant she's floating.

Then he has less logistical things to notice, because frankly - Ivanova's or not, the sight of a hand gliding down Talia's neck and brushing pooled satin down to her stomach is just erotic as all hell. The way her fingers curve to meet the weight of Talia's breast in her hand, cupped and lifted to her mouth...

"_Tease,_" Talia says, and bunches a hand in the mass of dark hair obscuring his vision of her to hold that mouth closer. He catches a glimpse of a neglected nipple teased by strands of chestnut hair, hears a laugh that sounds like a Susan he's never known, and then a sharp gasp that has him nearly jerking in his chair as Talia arches off the bed into the mouth closed around her nipple. Her fingers are uncoordinated, moving on blue silk, fighting with it, Susan laughing and offering random kisses as she helps.

"_But you're so easy to tease..._" She shrugs off a falling strap.

He has to swallow jealousy and hopeless confusion and disbelief and frustrating arousal, when it's Talia whose fingers curl into the twist of blue and push it away. Talia who runs her touch over the curve of Susan's hips and tiptoes fingertips across her ribs and cups the light fall of naked breasts in her hands with a look on her face that's wonderful, painful, killing him with just its existence. "_Well if you weren't so easy to want-_"

He never finds out if she would say any more than that; he barely sees the movement that presses them together. Only the kiss that starts with mouths and shutting her up, takes in hands and the rub of breasts together, the lazy slide of a foot along Ivanova's calf muscle that twitches under the caress.

Reeling from just knowing this... this _everything_... it's obviously inevitable that there's about to be more. You don't get ten minutes into making clearly passionate love to Talia Winters and stop without her even being naked. At least you wouldn't if you were Michael Garibaldi.

Susan Ivanova isn't looking likely to beat the odds, either.

There's a moment when he can't see Talia's hands for the fall of dark hair and the curve of a muscular back; Ivanova sucking at her breast, and he thanks heaven for small mercies that the repeat performance isn't quite so bad to see. It's twice as good to enjoy, if Talia's throaty murmur is anything to judge by. He tries not to think about that.

Ivanova helps him out: it's quite easy to forget the last two seconds, the last fifteen minutes, the last thirty-odd years when faced with the high-resolution, glorious Technicolor complete with stereo sound image of her hand pressing grey satin to Talia's sex, viewed so clearly he can see the slow crease of fabric as she slips a finger forward.

Talia _moans_.

It feels just exactly like he's having a heart attack. It's not outside the realms of possibility that he is.

Hoping beyond hope is useless, but he has to try. It's that or face the possibility that he's going to be found here in the morning slumped deader than dead across the console with a confession scrawled in his own come. He screws his eyes shut and hopes beyond hope that neither of them will care that Talia isn't naked. He hopes beyond hope, beyond prayer, that Ivanova is the quickest lay known to womankind.

When he opens his eyes again, it's because no one in Heaven, Hell or any earthly realm could keep from looking on hearing the sound Talia makes when Susan Ivanova - the woman who wouldn't speak to her politely for close to a year, the woman who barely admits to her being 'interesting' - slides two firm fingers inside her.

Willing it to be a hallucination does about as much good as it would to run down there and offer a hand, because Susan's doing just fine, it looks like.

Then it's "_Oh god... Susan..._ Susan..." as those fingers start to thrust, gently and then harder when Talia's hand in her hair demands another kiss. He doesn't need to see what she's doing when he can read the way they rock into that deep, intense rhythm.

Susan's doing fucking _brilliantly_.

And just when he thinks it couldn't be any worse, it couldn't get any more painful, it couldn't be even the slightest hint more erotic, it turns out that Talia isn't too bad at the whole thing, herself.

He's never in nearly three years thought about Susan having sex. It's on the list of thoughts not to have if he wants to live through this job, right up there with 'Don't shoot the Captain' and 'Never eat mess hall food on a Friday'. It's one of the imperative codes he lives by, because although yeah, it's an inescapable fact of life that Susan Ivanova is a gorgeous woman, it's also a fact of life that she's a gorgeous woman who could blow off your kneecaps at fifty paces and still slice and dice any part of you considered private before you hit the floor.

Even thinking about Susan with a telepath's bare, wet fingers thrusting into her and her head thrown back, gasping in Russian - it's tantamount to the firing squad.

So actually watching when Talia Winters - the woman she's spoken to maybe four times in his presence, the _telepath_ with the gloves that she watches every second they're in a room together - actually watching when Talia's suddenly straddling her and adding another finger, rubbing the length of her thumb against Susan's clit, rocking with her in that rhythm that he'd be able to notice even if mercifully he were struck down deaf, dumb, blind and mute right this moment, _please_...

...hearing the mess of language that trips from her tongue as her fingers walk blind to a stiff nipple and squeeze...

...watching the way their hands nudge, slippery, thrusting fingers touching, and the soft growl from Talia's throat as Susan's palm presses full around her breast just to have some part of her to touch, and Russian is hardly required to know the answering sound that meant "Mine."

He'd suffer less taking half the armory point-blank in the chest.

But even that isn't about to compare with the image that will sear into his brain for at least a dozen lifetimes of sewing circles; of Talia crying out, a soft scream and Susan's name over and over that burns in his ears. Talia, shaking with the force of orgasm, falling to the waiting grasping embrace that reaches for her, eyes locking with-

-this has to be _crazy fucking hell_, because he knows at that look with the kind of understanding that should come with a flash of lightning from above and a visit to the pearly gates... _Talia's in her head and Ivanova doesn't care_.

She more than doesn't care, from the sounds of it. She cares. She wants, and she makes it clear in whispers of "_god, I love you, oh god,_" and desperate fingers moving in places he doesn't want to see. And there are sounds; for longer than he'd have ever been able to keep going, that's for damn sure. And it's obvious he isn't about to be in for comparison, at least as long as Ivanova is still in any way functional as a human being.

"_My god, Susan._"

Of course he can hear the shiver in her voice perfectly. Of course he can see with eye-stabbing clarity as Ivanova withdraws wet fingers in a stroke that makes her shudder and sigh softly when they rest on the curve of her thigh, tightening into damp fingerprints in the moment that they slip apart completely and Talia lifts shining fingertips to Susan's lips, like a kiss, and accepted just as simply. "_Susan..._"

Post-coital Ivanova is another thing on his list not to consider. He tries not to. It doesn't work out well when she has that look on her face. "_Mm, ' know._"

A laugh, infinitely more relaxed. "_Are you ever going to let me say it?_" He doesn't need to see Talia's expression. It's there in her voice, and the sound of that he has definitely dreamed before. Ivanova stroking a hand up her back sends a twinge through him, that kind of possession right in front of his eyes. As if it wouldn't be enough to know it plain as day, he's gonna sit here and hear it said.

"_I know. I love you,_" and it has the kind of smile in the words, the way Ivanova says it, that meets his ears like nails in a coffin. "_Now that you've thoroughly worn me out, can I get a few hours' sleep in?_"

Instantly he really doesn't want to know that they sleep naked, spooned together, blonde hair briefly tangled in brown. He really doesn't want to know what it looks like when Ivanova holds her through the night and manages to thread their fingers together. He'd rather shoot himself than see Talia roll over with absolute trust and Ivanova yank the most accessible sheet across to bundle around them, and stroke over her skin.

It's a miracle his body still works when his mind has so little sense left in it, but some seconds of frantic blundering mean he can hit the right connection and the screen, mercy of mercies, blinks to black and leaves him in darkness.

  


*

  


Talia lifted her head a little. "Susan?"

"Mm." Fingertips flexed on her stomach.

"I think you forgot to turn off the camera."

Ivanova blew a teasing breath into her hair at the annoyance and shifted onto her back to look: yes, the damn motion-sensor light was on. Not surprising - she'd have complained to tech if it wasn't after all that.

"No one ever sees those things anyway." She rocked back onto her side and curled a leg over Talia's beneath the smooth sheet. "Go to sleep."

  


*

  



End file.
